


The Fox

by Disishistory



Series: A Ghost in My Soul - (The Fox) [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: (a little comfort but only a little), (as we all know), (maybe...), (sorta... sometimes), Angst, Animal Reincarnation, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hosea is a silver fox, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Video Game: Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), Psychological Drama, Reconciliation, Reincarnation, Set during the events of RDR1, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Video Game: Red Dead Redemption (2010), can be read as shippy or platonic, dutch's mental health is quite something, the author is trying to write a conceptual fic and wishes you luck getting into Dutch's head, will be read as sad in any case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24155791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disishistory/pseuds/Disishistory
Summary: 1911.As Dutch van der Linde's broken mind has become its own downward spiral, he receives strange visits in the deep of the Tall Trees forest. Whether it is a result of his madness or judgment coming his way, Dutch will have to confront echoes of the past and maybe lose the last shreds of sanity he has left.
Relationships: Hosea Matthews & Dutch van der Linde, Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde, John Marston & Dutch van der Linde
Series: A Ghost in My Soul - (The Fox) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893745
Comments: 33
Kudos: 90





	The Fox

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this made me SAD in the best cathartic way, but that's just Red Dead things for you (listening to the soundtracks of both RDR2 and _The Last of Us_ certainly helped set the mood).
> 
> Finally, I love Hosea Matthews with all my heart, and my and Dutch's love for him shall transcend canon boundaries. R* gave us animal symbolism and reincarnation possibilities, and I intend to use them. Who said Arthur was the only one with the animal privilege?
> 
> And thank you my dear [Menecio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/menecio/pseuds/menecio) for betaing and being the best!

He isn’t the one to spot it first. His men do.

He pays as much attention to it as to the vague sensation of time running between the leaves and the rocks that both protect and ensnare them, like a secret mockery whispered to his ears alone with each new gust of wind. He’s only aware of the three days that have passed since they settled in the cold mountains of Tall Trees because of Nastas’s latest complaint about their lack of activity. _Of purpose_ , were his words. He almost yielded to the alluring impulse of shooting him point-blank in the head then.

The wind is blowing yet again. The flaps of his tent are snapping like some distorted and muffled applause. For what they’ve done and what they’ll do, no doubt. Keep going. Keep pushing and _breaking_ , _until he’s won_ , _until he’s right_.

He almost rises from his cot to accept this acclamation with open and outstretched arms.

The noise of an unusual commotion from the other side of the camp deters him, forcing his eyelids open. The wind dies on time to let him hear a series of curses uttered by one of his men, followed by a quiet laugh from another. The volume of their voices only seems to rise between the walls of his skull. The earth has fully absorbed the wind by the time he finds himself standing in front of his tent, right hand resting on his holster like a promise.

“They spotted a silver fox,” Nastas tells him, a shadow decided on plaguing him.

One of the others is still laughing near the fire. “It stole one of our rabbits.” A new Indian curse escapes his offended friend’s lips. More quiet snickers.

“They aren’t common in this area no more,” Nastas tells him, regret lacing his tone. “They used to be.”

The wind rises anew. His eyes fall to the fire lighting the faces of the men, their features dancing in living shadows.

If the forest is looking at him, Dutch doesn’t look back.

“If it comes back, shoot it down.”

* * *

It’s the middle of the night when he sees it for the first time. Some two days after, maybe three.

Although the sounds are what wake his body up, it’s what his eyes catch in the thin blade of moonlight piercing through his tent’s opening that reaches his mind at first: a river of silver fur, sharp against a black even darker than the rest of his quarters.

But the rummaging coming from his provision crates eventually gets through the haze in his brain. He draws his pistol faster than his next breath, and that is when the fox turns and looks at him, salted pork already trapped in its jaw.

The pale light of the moon only allows for blackness or silver. And yet, two hazel beads are staring right back at him. Unmoving and unafraid, their amber almost mocking the monotone glow surrounding it.

His gun doesn’t waver, but his finger freezes for a moment. The fox just stares, _faces him_ , then tilts its head. Its busy, slightly opened jaw draws a strange curve on its features, almost like a defiant smile.

There’s a fire behind his eyelids when he blinks. _Stolen food and exchanged glances_. Thoughts made of loaded bullets and then, a risk. A _hunch_ , _tasting like a promise._

Dutch fires before he lets himself think.

The flash of grey that follows leaves him more dazed than the earth-shattering sound of his gunshot. Without even a yelp, the animal is gone, swallowed back by the moonlight outside his tent.

His ears are filled with the echo of his lost bullet. If his men are awake, he doesn’t hear them. Not that he wishes to anyway. His own breathing remains a remote sensation.

Dutch looks down at the silver veil of smoke escaping his gun’s barrel, the only sort of promise he knows now.

* * *

They’ve set up traps for it around camp. None of them have worked.

All they’ve caught so far are raccoons and a couple of squirrels. It’s been another few days since their nocturnal encounter, and the fox hasn’t been seen by any of them. But there sure are tracks, and he starts wondering if the pest isn’t doing that on purpose. He knows that animals can be as taunting as men.

Nothing has been snatched from their food reserve for a while now. He hasn’t been counting. He only knows they’ll be heading for Blackwater in two days. That is enough.

The moment is right. Can’t go back now. Couldn’t _then_. But he’d been so sure _…_ This moment is right; _he_ is right.

He’s sitting on his cot, staring at the blank page of his notebook — _not a journal, never_ — and blinks hard as shadows cloud his vision. Blinks again. Night has fallen already. He has half a mind to grab that bottle of whiskey to give at least a semblance of justification for those needles suddenly stuck behind his eyes.

He hears it then, as his arm stretches towards his most favored cure. The rustle of fur on dusty ground.

It isn’t spooked when Dutch jolts and stares at it.

Nor is it when his arm, still lifted in mid-air, snatches his gun under his pillow and takes aim at its chest.

The fox stares back, sitting on his excuse of a rug, hazel eyes aiming just as well as his weapon. Its small frame would evoke fragility if it weren’t for the sort of grace radiating from it, even as it remains there. Its front legs stand like thin, dark pillars against the sharp silver of its chest and neck, perfectly still save for one brush of its tail, as if it were judging its imminent death as a mere inconvenience. Or a very bad joke.

Dutch tightens his grip. Pictures it. He can see the red blotch spreading on the silver fur, growing until it’s sucked in all that black.

Curling up in agony on the rug. _On the street pavement._

His gun meets the ground in a deafening thud.

And still, it stares, and _stares_ , the golden eyes more piercing than his headache.

“ _You—_ ”

At the sound of his voice, the creature bolts out of the tent, as silent as it came, its paws barely disturbing the air when they hit the ground.

The headache goes away, but Dutch doesn’t sleep that night.

* * *

They’re walking. Pacing like animals scouting their territory. It’s a fitting comparison. The papers have been calling him that for decades, and it’s been so long now, he figures it’s best to stick to the part.

He needs a one-man outpost, two eyes watching the Great Plains and their endless stretches of dry, unpromising yellow grass. The stark contrast with the black woods they’re hiding in is dizzying. He’s never seen the sea, but he knows he’s seeing a desert. Nothing can grow there.

Nothing _should_ , so why should _they_ have even tried?

The air stills around him. The sound of his men’s footsteps is absorbed in the grass. There is a yip coming from behind him, and he knows before he turns around.

The Fox stands proudly on a rock as if he’s been keeping watch over this strange frontier long before them and challenges them to do better. There are five of them, and all he does is twitch an ear.

One of his men chuckles, because what were the odds? Since that night in his tent, Dutch has been thinking the odds are in fact pretty high. Another man grabs his rifle.

The Fox’s hazel eyes are looking at him, and Dutch feels like it’s all they’ve done ever since he’s come into their camp that first time, stealing from them and parading the next day like an uncatchable wisp. A canon is staring at _him_ , and _he_ only stares at Dutch.

“Leave it. We need to go,” he says, turning his back on him, his hand suddenly clutching his belt. There’s no turning back, for no one, even for him, wasn’t any back _then_ , so why should he _now_? His grip tightens when one of his men starts asking questions. Not because of the urge to kill, but because of the urge to look back. His ears can’t escape that second yip, weak but reproachful. Like one scolding too many.

“I said let’s go.”

His feet guide him while his eyes look down, seeing without seeing the soft forest ground roll in a blur under his too-quick pace, tall grass and small rocks sliding before his vision in a river of green, gold and grey, and he has to close his eyes for a second. It’s a mistake, because that short-lived darkness is all it takes to make him turn and look back at the distant rock.

But the Fox is gone.

* * *

There was a time when he would have pretended making so much noise was an unfortunate consequence. Not necessarily unwelcome, but unplanned. Some people might have called it a mistake, but _they_ …

He doesn’t bother pretending anymore. Making noise is what they do to exist. Nastas and his tribe are stifled by the choice of either being granted a slim promise of survival in exchange for oblivion or killing and dying in the hope that the fire they set might burn bright and long enough to remind this wretched idea of a country that they were here.

Dutch is suffocating too. He’s not stopping anyway. What’s killing him the most is not knowing the exact moment when this choking started. And there is no one left to help him find that answer.

He hasn’t been in Blackwater for at least a decade. Deep down, he’s known for just as long that he would never go back there unless it was to smell the powder of his gun.

The horses start neighing at the second gunshot. His steed is already stamping in repressed panic when he and his men reach them to flee the homestead and the tangible wraths of the last remaining owner and that, sure to come, of the law. He misses the Count.

The pounding of hooves and the blazing of guns respond to one another, like a well-practiced tune, and they’re gone.

Running and running, always further.

He knows about the law in town. Those new agents. He knows that even a homestead on the borders of the city is a risk. He’ll take that and bite it twice if need be.

There’s a crossroad. The two paths, left or right, are valid escape routes, and the law might be waiting for them farther down each, both, or neither. Before they set that job in motion, he would have favored the path on the right.

The Fox is sitting by that one.

Once again, waiting and watching.

The stomping of the coming horses barely makes his tail twitch. As they come closer, he simply stands and walks a few steps, just enough to avoid the tempest of dust their flight is sure to raise, never leaving them out of his sight.

Dutch can’t see them yet, but he grinds his teeth as he braces for his hazel eyes.

The Fox barks once, and Dutch jerks his reins to the left.

This is a trap set for him. The mere thought of this being a helpful sign offends him on a physical level.

His ears are still ringing with the tumult of the first shot, the gallop, and the Fox’s voice. He doesn’t understand what the four lawmen yell at them when they suddenly emerge from behind a lonely standing rock. The words bounce back against a new curtain of gunfire, and this unflattering, unremarkable spot on the outskirts of that wretched town considered a beacon of “modernity” becomes a theater of barely contained chaos.

Good, a part of him thinks. Should have listened to the Fox, another, weaker but infuriatingly persistent part says.

It takes him another minute, as the dust settles on the lifeless bodies of the four lawmen, to register the fire burning both his right shoulder and flank. As his luck would have it, he’s merely been grazed. As fate would have it, it still hurts like a bitch.

Blood drips on his thigh and his horse’s coat. His hands are sticky with it on the reins.

He’s imagining the Fox barking at him again. Maybe it’s even real.

_Told you so._

* * *

Night has the reputation of being a carrier of counsel. If it ever was once true for anyone, he knows for sure it hasn’t been for him for a long time. The best thing night could bring him is rest, if luck fell with the sun. Most of the time, it gives him a swirl of old doubts and certainties. It leaves him too confused to even know what he regrets and what he doesn’t.

He’s standing there alone, amidst the trees and their leaves of frost, way outside the camp. It’s not snowing yet, but it’s like nature is begging for it. The only movement he can see is the smoke coming from his cigarette. The third one, now. He knows there’s life in this forest, can hear it too, but it doesn’t come near him.

Save for him, of course.

Dutch wants to lie to himself. To hold on to the belief that he’s alone in the woods out of sheer madness and not because of that knot of hope stuck in his throat. And yet that knot loosens when the Fox finally appears, following an unknown scent on the dry ground. There is no doubt that he is aware of his presence because when he finally decides to raise his head, he doesn’t flinch when his eyes find Dutch’s.

It only occurs to him that he’s never doubted for one second that this has been the same fox all along. That revelation brings about another, the fact that this might be the only unmovable piece of knowledge in a world that keeps changing like a river bed during a flood. He used to think he was a rock against the stream, and that world keeps saying he’s but a pebble. _Flying or sinking_ , _if there’s a difference…_

A yap brings him back to the surface. The Fox is still looking at him, and the smoke of his cigarette is a poor barrier against his stare. He flattens the tip against the heel of his boot, offering the Fox one last opportunity to act like an actual fox, but the animal hasn’t moved when Dutch looks up again, like he’s been waiting for him way longer than those thirty seconds. Who’s been waiting for whom is a goddamn unanswered question.

“What do you want?” His voice is a whispered mumble, but it’s always going to sound too loud in the quiet and cold of the woods.

He knows himself mad, but if they’re both here, why not push? Why not see where this leads, just like everything else in his life, since he _still_ ain’t dead?

He takes one careful step towards the Fox. When he doesn’t move, he takes another. The Fox stares. At the third step, the Fox turns his whole body to face him but still doesn’t bolt.

“You gonna run off again?” The Fox’s ears flatten back against his head for a moment. Dutch stops in his tracks. “What? Isn’t it what you’ve been doing this whole time?” Maybe it’s the cold of the night, the sharp contrast against the darkness of his fur and their surroundings, but the creature’s eyes seem to be blazing at his words.

Despite this, there is no tension in the rest of his body. An animal that somehow is neither prey or predator when it should always be one or the other. It makes Dutch’s hair stand up on the back on his neck.

The lump is back in his throat, only this time, hope is laced with anticipation. He’s been longing to see the Fox again, but suddenly, the sight is not enough. He’s so close he could _touch it_.

A strange dread falls on him, but it has nothing to do with the fear of being jumped at. He can feel his hands shaking when he crouches down to his level. He’s scared of what will happen to him if he can’t feel that fur against the palm of his hand. Of what that would mean.

“Are you—” His voice cracks, betraying him just in time to keep the dangerous thoughts away.

The warm eyes seem to soften, but the Fox makes no move to get closer. Dutch raises his hand slowly. The vapor of his breath is thicker than his cigarette smoke was. His fingers are only an inch from his muzzle.

“Don’t run away.”

There’s a hazel flash, and pain explodes in his hand. He falls back with a yell, clenching his bloodied wrist as his legs kick the air. He barely catches sight of the Fox disappearing into the darkness of the forest, not sparing him one glance.

His eyes scan the trees frantically as if expecting the Fox to come back from a different direction any second now. He loses track of time again. The blood dripping down his forearm brings him back. The hand that’s still holding his wrist has become sticky with it. The bite is deep, even if the Fox’s jaws didn’t squeeze for more than half a second. Dutch would believe it the slash of a knife if it weren’t for the clear bite marks imprinted on his skin.

Other people would describe the whole event as the logical outcome of an encounter with a wild animal. But Dutch knows better.

He wants to scream to whichever soul or beast is listening to him in these woods that he doesn’t understand, but he does. _Oh_ _God, he does._

The Fox ain’t the one who’s been running away.

* * *

Nastas betrayed them.

As past and present have shown, that means consequences.

It doesn’t matter what Nastas says. There are rules.

 _No more rats_.

His skull is splitting with the headache that started the moment he landed the first punch in Nastas’s jaw on the wreck of the _Serendipity_. He didn’t have to throw another, his men knew what they had to do. What needs to be done, he told them. For your tribe. This man ain’t your brother anymore _._ It barely took any convincing at all.

Meanwhile, his knuckles and head hurt with the memories of broken trusts. Each assault behind his eyes feels like a reflection of failures, _inescapable failures._ Still, it must all mean a goddamn something, at the end of it all. _I’m here, ain’t I? I’m here and they’re dead_.

And yet, there’s one betrayal he can’t shake himself off because there is no memory of himself or any other person blowing the head and guts of the culprit to help him snuff out the visions and sounds. Most of the days, he tells himself it wasn’t a betrayal. That this thought is a lie whispered by ghosts long gone, accusing, blaming, and not _listening_ to him. Not _believing_ in him. And there are days like today, where he opens his eyes and finds himself alone, toying with his revolver, caressing his temple with the barrel.

He doesn’t know where he is. He knows Nastas isn’t dead, even if he’ll be at some point, because alive is what they need him to be right now. And he knows where his men are.

They’re with _John._

John and these agents. Hunting _him._

Dutch’s fingers are clutching his hair, his other hand still holding the gun. He must have been holding it a long time because the metal no longer feels cold against his skin. His head hurts like it’s about to snap open.

Eventually, his shoulders start shaking with irrepressible laughter. With no man to hear him in whatever desolated spot of those woods he’s hiding in, why should he even care? It doesn’t kill his headache, but it fills his lungs with chill air, and he’ll take the burning sensation in his chest anytime if it grants him the illusion it can erase all the rest.

 _John is back._ Of course he should be laughing about it all.

His laughter falters but doesn’t quite die when, at last, he appears from behind a tree, not ten feet away from him. He’s always thought foxes to be close enough to dogs when it comes to showing emotion. The Fox here isn’t laughing at all. His somewhat severe stare only rekindles Dutch’s hilarity.

“What? You must admit this is a good one. _John_. Of all people!” If he’s able to read any emotion in the animal’s eyes, he thinks it close to disapproval. “Where’s your sense of humor, _old friend_?”

He knows breaking his own heart won’t make his head or his mind better, but it’s too late to take back the thoughts and words. So he continues to laugh, until his breath turns into a wheeze and he has to bend over, palms against knees.

The Fox is gone when he looks up.

He keeps laughing, God knows for how long, never letting go of his gun.

* * *

He hasn’t seen him for days now. Not even during one of his nightly escapades into the woods. His men have seen no trace of the slippery thief that has been periodically stealing their mutton and game bird meat ever since they moved camp.

Things aren’t going as well as they planned with Blackwater—will they ever with this city?—with their ambush at the wreck of the _Serendipity_ failing to deter the efforts of the men tracking him.

Nastas has survived the shootout. So has John.

Dutch hasn’t slept in two days. So when the men bring him one of Agent Ross’s lackeys, he’s more than happy to put a bullet through the man’s skull, secretly hoping his finger will trigger more than a cathartic execution. He allows himself to imagine a bolt of black and silver sliding through the camp, a thin but tenacious jaw latching onto his hand, his arm, his _throat_ , anything that would tell him he didn’t hallucinate the Fox this entire time.

He can barely feel the ground under his feet as he steps away from the still fuming corpse. The air around him is purer but he can’t even feel it. He doesn’t feel the cold on his skin. He doesn’t feel the warmth of his own body either, not even under the cover of the furs in his tent. If his body can’t sleep, it surely doesn’t seem like it’s awake.

At night, he’s seized again by the bottomless terror that took him when he tried to touch the Fox that time in the forest, his sense of control and reality slipping through his fingers, with no guarantee of finding anything else to hold on to. There’s a void hiding under his feet, and he’s gonna be swallowed by it. _Down and down and down… with no ground to catch his fall. No end to it._

The irony of an uncertain, unexplainable animal apparition with amber eyes from the past as his sole anchor to the present should make him laugh like he did that day, after the _Serendipity_. But he just wants to scream. Or shoot more bullets.

A flicker of light from above suddenly catches his eyes. They widen when they recognize the figure spying him with binoculars from a remote cliff overlooking Cochinay.

 _Of course_ John would think he’d be safe from being spotted there. It almost makes Dutch smile. Instead, he raises his gun, his sight clearer in this instant that it has been in days.

Time slows to a halt when a lithe silhouette appears on a higher ledge behind John. He can’t see the hazel eyes from here. But a silver-tipped tail waves in a silent warning. Or a plea.

Dutch bites his tongue, breath caught in his throat.

The sound of his shot tears through the silence of the valley. A loud and metallic echo spreads between the hills as John falls to the ground and doesn’t get up.

The Fox remains perched on his rock for a few seconds more. His tail swings again, slowly, as if all his muscles were freed from the tension that took hold of them just moments ago. Before he slowly turns around to disappear behind the hill, he lets out a small, unaggressive yip.

Dutch turns away. If John wants to spy on them now, he’ll have to get a little closer.

* * *

The last rays of the sun cast long shadows on the camp, and Dutch is shoving a gun against one of his men’s throat.

He’d been staring at maps and newspapers for two hours—was it more?—when he heard the men cheer outside.

“They caught it!” one of them exclaimed, passing by his tent. He doesn’t remember who, because the words made him feel the pumping of his heart for the first time in days. He hated the feeling as soon as he recognized it.

When he steps outside, the sight of the silvery carcass thrown unceremoniously to the ground like a filthy rag doll empties his lungs, and his eyes become stones inside his skull, his vision going dark while a shaky hand he realizes to be his own reaches for his holster. The only reason he hasn’t blown his hunter’s brains out yet is because of his aching desire to rip the flesh of his neck with his own bare hands. His ears are ringing, and he’s happy for it. He doesn’t care for whatever dread or rebellion he inspires in his men’s hearts right now. All he wants to hear is the sound of his own voice to keep away a silence that would make reality the desolate spectacle his treacherous eyes had caught. Those same eyes are now burning with the same intensity as his chest. He can’t breathe, he can’t see, _he’ll never feel him again now_.

“I told y’all to _LEAVE IT!_ ”

He’s acutely aware of the mass of sullied fur at his feet. He can feel _it_ getting closer under its weight… The _void_ underneath, following each one of his steps like an inexhaustible trapper. He’ll fall into that bottomless pit any second now, fall through the crack opened by _his_ corpse, _no end to it, no end._ But his rage has always been his best ally to keep him afloat. And he won’t fall before some other life is taken.

He isn’t surprised that the only sound that reaches his eardrums is the cocking of his gun; that sound never leaves him. And he’ll never let it go.

But he is surprised when another sound pierces through the fog of his fury.

A yip he would recognize anywhere.

Colors and shapes explode in his vision as his senses come back to him like a lightning bolt, and he knows, _he knows_ , when he sees others turn their heads towards the source of the sound, that this is _real_.

He drops his gun, but he never hears it hit the ground. “Where is it?”

He looks at the men and their confusion becomes a language he doesn’t care to read. He’s always been mad, and looking like it as he spins around in the hope of seeing _him_ might just make them all aware of that, and make them realize they never cared in the first place.

“ _Where_ is it?” he asks no one, because they’ve never been able to find the Fox anyway. It’s always _him_ revealing himself when he wants to. Waiting for Dutch. _Waiting and waiting._

Something snaps inside of him. His legs take him outside the camp, into the snow-covered forest, away from the void and towards _him_. He runs and the freezing air stabs his throat with no mercy. He’d forgotten how painful it could be to feel alive.

The tall pines bar his vision like a jail window, the snow at his feet taunting him with the absence of tracks.

“I’m here!” he howls.

He turns around, over and over. Dark and white spots dance before his eyes, the woods flashing before him like an ill-devised spinning lantern. He could be miles away from camp, and he doesn’t care. Because the Fox always finds him. It’s never been up to Dutch, or goddamn Nature. Just _him_.

Another yip. Dutch’s heart jumps to his throat.

“I’m here!” he shouts again. “What do you want from me? COME ON!”

The silence that responds to him suddenly tastes like infinity. He doesn’t dare to breathe again, fearing he might miss the next alert. The next clue.

It doesn’t come, and Dutch is exhausted.

“What do you want from me?” he whispers, but the Fox doesn’t reply.

The only sound that comes back to him is that of his own impatient voice, muffled by a different snow, on a different mountain, in another life.

_What do you want from me, Hosea?_

He only breathes again when his knees meet the ground, compelled by his solitude to remember. What _he_ ’d wanted then, in those different mountains, Dutch had never given him.

In the dying sunlight, the shadows stretch, turning all the trees around him into accusing crosses.

* * *

Back in Blackwater. Back in a bank. He finds himself wondering a lot what year it is today.

A small part of him is almost tempted to believe he’s dead and has been thrown back into the past. Another part, louder, rougher, suffocating in its resilience, is too busy fighting the present to allow him to even ignore it, though _God knows_ he’s been trying.

Not that he’s afraid of John’s gun, pointed directly at his head as they face each other in a room that’s now too small for the audience trapped in it. Hell, he could even start appreciating the irony.

He’s also outnumbered, would be outgunned were it not for that woman he’s holding against the tip of his semi-automatic pistol. And he’s talking more now than he’s been in days. Spilling venom with a pleasure he hasn’t felt in quite some time. Taunting John with Abigail, _the camp whore only_ he _had the moral goodness to marry_. Ugly truths and ugly lies tied together by others left unsaid. The sort of stalling one keeps in store for heists not going according to plan.

_Stalling and making deals, deals written on the pavement with splashes and puddles of blood never belonging to those who trade._

He’s got no choice but to shoot that girl now. Because that’s what must always be done, isn’t it? _Blackwater again_ , a lifetime ago. _Saint Denis…_

_Boats. Banks. Mountains. Whirls of dust and smells of powder and wet iron._

To hell with it all.

The brain of the girl explodes in a curtain of blood that covers his retreat, his left fist tightened to stop the trembling as the right pulls the trigger with abandon in the bank’s hall. Never turning back to look at John.

A smile tugs at the corners of his lips. Maybe the answer is there. Like his deepest and truest self always thought. _Cycles and circles, there’s no straight lines_ , he’s the living proof of that. And he can’t be trapped by them if he’s the one pulling the trigger. For one truly blessed instant, he can forget about the cost of deals. He’ll be the one making them now, not Nastas, not the government, and certainly not John. His epiphany—no, it’s not even that, he’s always felt it inside him—makes his blood pump so fast in his veins he can feel his heart begin to swell.

It drops in his chest when he sees who’s sitting in the middle of the town’s square as he and his most trusted shooters hop into the car. Hazel eyes ever watching and—he knows, from this short distance—pleading.

His self-fulfilled delusion shatters with a bang. His blood, so hot and alive one second ago, turns to ice, as red stains dance before his eyes, specters from the past. He blinks and now he imagines them, _sees_ them covering the Fox’s magnificent silver chest. The dark red spreads and spreads and _God, it’s everywhere, pouring from his chest, soaking the ground before that bank, and “there’s your deal, Dutch,” and GODDAMNIT, KILL THOSE BASTARDS!_

He blinks again. The blood is gone, but not the Fox, who keeps watching, fur intact under the touch of sun. Dutch can’t take his eyes off him, because if he does—

But they start the car, fleeing under a rain of bullets, sending back a storm of their own at the law bent on chasing them to Hell if need be. Dutch is paralyzed on his seat, left hand still clutching the metal door of the car, eyes locked on the Fox nobody but he seems to notice.

“Go! Just go!” he screams like these are his last words on Earth.

The men think it’s an unnecessary order meant for them. Dutch is too caught up in sounds and visions from another time to care about their errors. And when their vehicle turns around the first corner and the Fox leaves his sight, the dam of ice breaks. His hands don’t shake when he raises his two pistols and lets his inner inferno loose. His eyes seem to kill before his guns do because any person he looks at drops dead the next second.

He knows there are civilians among the corpses and he knows that if something prevents him from sleeping that night, it won’t be their faces. He doesn’t recall any. He wishes he could recall just one, be it lawman, _Pinkerton_ or passer-by, just so he could bask in his fury, see them bleed out on the ground like dogs over and over again in his head, make them pay endlessly for walking in front of him when he was haunted by visions he could recall only too well.

He later hears one of the men, strangely unfazed, describe him as a demon of death, possessed by a rage he’s never witnessed in him before, even on his worst days. Dutch has never believed in demons, but the last part about rage is right.

And if he needs to kill more to assuage it, then _so be it._

* * *

He shot at John today.

For real, this time. He’s still alive of course, because John Marston has always been good at dodging and escaping. A shame they didn’t get that weasely, cocaine-drowned excuse of an anthropologist neither. His men would love nothing more than to tear him and his big theories about the science of skulls apart, and boy would he let them. After the bank heist, he decided that the professor would make an excellent recipient for his murder urges. But John, _always so good and so much better John_ , had to step in and defend the wretched creature he would have gladly put down himself in another life. Truly, shooting at John then was easy. This was as good a sport as any. Even John agreed.

They’re safe for now in Cochinay. There’s no doubt they’ll come for him sooner or later. They’ll send John and some other better-paid agents and they’ll rain down on them like a pack of well-trained dogs.

He shot at John today, and he knows he’ll do it again. That’s the way it is.

Dutch is alone in the woods once more, letting shadows slide over his body as he stares at the setting sun. He might get another head-splitting migraine for that later, but it’s nothing he ain’t used to.

He’s past the point denying he isn’t waiting for him. Today of all days, after what happened, he should appear. Probably to judge him from the safe distance he always imposes on the both of them, save for that day when he sank his teeth in his flesh. He’s come to believe this whole thing is just that: a dragging judgment, meant to fill him with doubts and dreams, fake regrets and fake certitudes, then leave him alone to look for the real ones in the midst of the night, with the unshakable certainty that his mind is too far gone to ever find an answer.

But the Fox ain’t here. Dutch has been sitting on the cold dead ground for two hours maybe, and not even his sick mind can conjure him up. Never could, not even in whiskey-induced dreams. The Fox _happens_ to him, and all his will and might have nothing to do with it. His madness is of no help to him.

A sense of urgency takes hold of him. A tension flashes through his muscles, and it’s like the rest of his body is squeezing his own neck. The tranquil scenery doesn’t care for his sudden agitation, for that flame of indefinable panic lighting up in his stomach. He wants to yell again as he did once, _or maybe several times_ , when the Fox wouldn’t stay, wouldn’t offer him any answer, wouldn’t just give him a goddamn proof he’s not been hallucinating him in his half-crazed wish for this fragment of the past to either take him back or simply take him _down_.

He opens his mouth but the scream that echoes against the trees and the rocks isn’t his.

It’s a broken yelp. The sound of a wounded animal.

It is the most painful irony that his deepest certitude in months almost breaks him right here because at this moment, there is no doubt concerning the animal that made that sound.

Dutch is on his feet the next second, spinning around, _running_.

There’s another yelp, weaker this time. The sound seems to be coming from nowhere.

He runs. _He’s already passed this tree_. The faraway hills have consumed half of the sun. The next cry follows its westward course, and so does Dutch. Minutes or only seconds may have passed when a root catches his foot, sending him sprawling to the ground. Dark spots pierce his eyes. The trunks of the pines are dancing in the corners of his vision. The sun shines a bit brighter in the twilight, guiding him back up his feet, and that’s when Dutch sees it.

Standing against the sunset, a golden stag, bigger than any other deer he’s ever seen in his life, antlers spreading towards the sky.

A twig breaks under his weight, and the stag’s head snaps towards him. Its ears flap against the base of its crown, but it doesn’t budge from its spot, only thirty feet away from him. Its silhouette is carved in the dying light of the day, making Dutch squint as he tries to capture its features. He can’t quite make out its eyes, but the hair on the back of his neck stands as it becomes undeniable that the deer is truly looking at him. _Through him_.

His thoughts turn into wind, a senseless storm with no aim, no direction. No word comes to him, as his mind is laid bare, just like that time… _Speechless, aimless. Exposed as a fraud to himself, his ultimate failure on top of a mountain._

The cry resounds once more, and Dutch somehow knows it will be the last. The stag turns in direction of its source, losing whatever interest it had in him. Without even granting him a final look, the stag bolts away, disappearing down the hill, swallowed by the horizon as it chases the sound.

Dutch wanders in the woods for hours that evening. He doesn’t find the stag, its tracks fading as soon as the sun finishes its declining course in the West.

He never finds the Fox, and Dutch has no choice but to let the memories of his helpless cries of pain haunt him through the night. When he finally falls to the ground, his back pushed against a tree, hands clutching at his hair, he can only hope that the golden stag found what he couldn’t.

* * *

There are whispers of the government coming at them any day now, and all Dutch can think is _fucking finally._

Not many have suggested moving camp. Those who did soon fell in with the rage of their brothers, a rage Dutch has never had difficulty to exploit. They barely need any sort of speech these days.

Good thing too. Because Dutch is tired.

They’re coming for him, and he’s tired of his inescapable desire to fight them to the last bullet. His awareness of his own nature weighs down heavier on his shoulders with each new sun. _Push on, again and again, and let’s see who breaks first._

A chuckle escapes his lips. He has an idea about that.

God, he needs sleep.

His watch might be broken for all he knows, because the way time flies by makes less and less sense ever since he met the Stag, ever since he lost the Fox. _Again,_ a twisted voice coming from that gulf inside him whispers. Yes, again. _Cycles and circles. Like an old gun’s cylinder, waiting for the next bullet, his finger on the trigger._

He doesn’t notice right away that his hand has given shape to his wild thoughts: the length of the barrel of his semi-automatic pistol rests against his cheek once more, like a support beam for his heavy skull, a cold yet comforting presence. He never points the end against his temple when that happens. Just lets the metal suck the warmth out of his skin, his wrist and fingers lax around the weapon. When did he trade his old Schofields for this model, again?

The effort required by the sort of recollection has long lost the simplicity of his younger days. It would be simpler if he could just—

His hand tightens on the grip. Slowly, almost like a wraith with its own volition, the gun shifts. The thin bar of metal becomes a single pressure point against the side of his forehead, and a shiver runs down his spine. His stare is blank, fixed on the drapes of his tent.

He blinks once. Twice. Confusion rises in his chest when he sees the gun abandoned on the floor, right by his cot. His fists are tight on his lap, but they don’t shake. His breathing does when the humiliation of this new absence hits him fully. His tent suddenly feels too small, and the promise of his gun _not enough_ for whatever is eating him at the core.

His feet take him outside, make him climb the wooden ladders of their fort, and then higher. To the top of that mountain if he can. An old echo of himself laughs at the paradox of having to sink into a cave to reach higher grounds. His heart pounds harder with each step, each move made stiffer by the weight of the winter coat he didn’t realize he’d put on. His joints are begging him to stop, but that’s not a thing he’s ever been good at. He’ll stop when his bones break, it would seem.

The light grows at the other side of the tunnel. His walking could be mistaken for drunken torpor as his muscles scream for rest he can’t give them. The grey winter sky is enough to blind him when he emerges, but his pupils have to get used to the light eventually. He doesn’t know what he expected to find up there. He sure as hell didn’t hope he’d find _him_ , because hope died that evening in the forest when the Stag disappeared, chasing the distant yelps.

And yet, there he stands, at the center of the cliff. Paws planted on the ground, but head and tail low, in surrender to some invisible ache.

Dutch’s breath is taken away by how beautiful and miserable he looks.

“You’re—”

 _Alive,_ he almost says. There’s a burn behind his eyes when he realizes he can’t say it.

“You’re here. He found you.”

He takes a step forward, more hesitant now than during his first attempt in the forest. And for the first time, the Fox looks unsure about what to do. When Dutch takes another step, the Fox lets out a feeble yip, a sound of defeat so profound Dutch wonders if he’s been truly physically wounded. But there’s no blood. _Not like back then,_ there’s no blood now _, you ain’t dying._

A lump grows inside his throat, heavy and rough like the cold granite around them. The past few days come back to him in a blazing trail. Almost on cue, the Fox sits, shoulders still hunched.

“What happened?” He’s not sure he asked that one out loud. His migraine is coming up again. He suddenly recalls the unleashing of gunfire, the killing, he sees Nastas’s beaten up face, John’s riding fierce on his trail. “I did this…”

His arm extends towards the Fox with his next step. The hazel eyes are fixed on his outstretched hand.

“I did this _to you._ ”

The Fox doesn’t respond, his body as still as the mountain. Just another step and Dutch could _touch him_.

“Please—”

It’s like it’s the only word he has left. His entire body is begging for something only _he_ can give him, whatever that might be.

 _Please. Let me feel you’re_ here.

“I did this to you,” he repeats.

When his hand finally gets too close, the Fox bites again. Pain shoots through his hand, but he doesn’t pull away. Neither does the Fox.

“I know. I know. I did this to you,” he falters. The jaw around his palm slackens, as a soft whine arises from the Fox’s chest, like a pleading regret. “I did this to _all_ of you,” he quavers, the shaking of his voice undeniable now. His other hand reaches for his silvery neck. The Fox lets him sink his fingers in his fur, the softest fur no trapper will ever touch. Dutch holds it, not too tight but firm enough. His _anchor_.

He barely notices that his other hand is now free of any pressure, lips trembling as the Fox whines again and licks his fresh wound.

“Please… don’t go.”

Not again, please, _please._

“Don’t leave me _again_.”

It’s all it takes for him to collapse. Dutch hunches over himself, his entire frame shaking with sobs he no longer has the energy to keep inside as the Fox closes the remaining distance between them, nestling against his chest, the both of them too exhausted to keep up their fights.

“I’m sorry. So sorry. Please _._ ”

He closes his eyes in the vain hope to stop the waves of memories, but they crash harder behind his eyelids, a storm he has no control over. All he can do is hold him, hold him tight because he can now, just for tonight. More than his fragmented soul ever deserved.

The Fox his nuzzling against his neck, and Dutch buries his face in the ashen fur, inhaling its scent of snowy mountains and ancient pines.

“Please, stay. I’m sorry I couldn’t… _Please stay._ ”

He repeats his litany over and over, the words rolling off his tongue in an attempt to untie the knot that threatens to suffocate him. He utters nonsense too. Promises he made and some he only just dreamed of making. Thoughts he never heard in his head before this exact moment.

“I wanted to come back to you that day. I wanted to hold you, and I just…”

_Ran. And failed. A cascade of failures, punishing like a storm at sea._

One of the Fox’s paws comes to rest against his shoulder, as he uses it to press himself a little closer.

He still isn’t done shaking when the truth hits him. “I can’t do this anymore.” He knows he truly won’t be able to, very soon.

But the Fox shifts against him some more, as if to spread warmth to his insensitive body. And maybe, just maybe, this is enough. Maybe he still has some luck left to receive a gift that he should never have got.

They stay like this for god knows how long. For Dutch, it would always be too small an eternity.

When they pull apart, he drowns himself in those hazel eyes, selfishly basking in their comforting light. The pain in his hand is almost comforting too. Only a meager punishment for what he did. There has to be more in store for him. But they’re both so tired. “Always too kind,” he murmurs.

As the Fox doesn’t move, Dutch runs his injured hand through the smooth fur, reaching for the white spots on his chest and head, letting the sweet pain of old memories settle in his gut as he sees younger fingers, his own, circled with gold long gone now, carding through white hair in stolen shadows. He rests his forehead against the creature’s, breathing, at last.

“I have missed you… _Hosea_.”

Another soft whine, and he’s too selfish not to hope this means the same words echoed back to him.

“This’ll be over soon. I guess.” He doesn’t ask if that’s why he’s here. The question has long lost its point.

The Fox lets his head brush against his cheek again, then takes a step back, and for a split second, Dutch thinks this is over, that’s he’s gonna leave. The Fox just sits back, allowing Dutch to rest a hand on his shoulders, to hold him some more.

“I must truly look like hell for you to be that nice to me, hmm?” The joke leaves a bittersweet taste on his tongue, like a delicacy that has lost its flavor over the years. The amber eyes don’t indulge him, but they keep looking, offering him a respite here, on top of that desolated cliff. “It’d be nice if I could sleep a little, I think.”

The Fox blinks at him, leans a bit closer against his arm.

“Yeah, that’d be nice. Just… stay here a moment.”

And so he stays, long enough for Dutch’s lids to finally drop on his weary eyes, so dark he knows they could probably reflect the pair of hazel orbs that never stop watching him.

The cold wakes him up a few hours later, right after the sun has set. The darkening sky is still striped with thin purple clouds.

He’s alone on the ledge, curled up on the ground. He’s slept more on the top of that mountain this evening than he has in days.

* * *

The air is filled with gunpowder, and the smell of blood will soon take over. His men are falling like flies, mowed down like target practice, their cause and anger all buried in oblivion before their bodies even touch the ground. He doesn’t notice that until it’s too late. He’s too busy preaching at John again, shooting words like he shoots bullets. All of them missing.

_It’s over!_

There’s this dark hole in his brain again, eating at him ever since the first gunshot made all the birds fly off in a panic. He keeps throwing his own fears at John, as he tries himself to outrun them, one last time.

_Killing him won’t make the past go away._

Maybe that’s why he keeps shooting at John’s feet, not bothering to aim anymore as he runs and climbs his way through the dark, the man he once called “son” hot on his tail.

There’s blood pouring from his right side. When did that happen? Each intake of breath is more painful than the last. But he keeps pushing. _On and on. Blood coating his fingers. That’s what he is, always has been, he’s never changed._

 _So why should John have? Why should any of them have?_ howls the dark pit in his mind. _Why should he be wrong?_

He’s out of the tunnel, back at the top of the mountain, alone this time, but not for long. The flash of a past sunset suddenly obscures his vision, a crown of antlers rising in the golden light, reminding him where all this leads, stabbing his denial through the heart.

_We can’t fight change._

It’s always been so many voices screaming that at him, him never listening. Hearing his own merge with them fills him with a strange sense of peace, silencing the loud black pit inside of him. He’s been a ghost for too long.

He and John are face to face. John’s hold on his weapon is not shaking for a second, and his gaze is made of steel. Such a shame. Both of them blind for so long.

The Stag will never appear to him again save in his memories. So he talks about plans. About gravity and its inescapable pull, as he stands closer to the edge, his mind already sent back to another place, another precipice, back when summer still existed. It’s not quite asking for forgiveness, but it’s too late for that anyway, _always too late_.

John looks at him like he’s mad. The pity he discerns in his eyes, however, is more disconcerting. When Dutch throws his gun aside, he doesn’t read surprise in them but shrouded relief, as John holsters his weapon in return.

He tries to make John see, then. Make him understand that there was reason for this chaos, even if he’d fabricated it for himself. He’s been chasing the idea of purpose through thick and thin, till every bone in his body was convinced he had one. He’s now standing at the edge of the world, and Nature has caught up. This is his final _deal_.

“Then give up, Dutch!” John says, and perhaps it’s a plea. He says he’ll have to shoot him if he doesn’t, but Dutch knows better. They’ve both always been so good at lying to themselves.

John can’t _see_ for now, but Dutch hopes he will, and soon. He has been doomed from the day he was born, but maybe Arthur was right, in the end… Maybe John will see. And live. In this instant, and from the bottom of his withered heart, Dutch truly hopes so. He also very much doubts so.

He takes a step back. Blood is dripping down his leg. His sight is already a blur, a mist of greys that never get quite close to silver. He wishes he could see that silver, just one last time.

_But their time is passed._

He just has to take one more step. One last decision. Alone.

There’s a brush against his hand. A sea of softness, caressing his fingertips, spreading warmth into them, a slow current of life that flows right up to his heart. His fingers fold onto themselves, seeking to hold that familiar fur closer to his skin. The soothing warmth turns into a solid and comforting touch. A palm against his. Squeezing, holding. More than he deserves.

His last step is the easiest.

The warmth never leaves him as he falls. It’s slower than he expected. He just hopes it’s not endless.

— Fin —

**Author's Note:**

> Phew. That was a sad ride.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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